Training events from the FOSTER project
It’s been a busy month for FOSTER training events with Sarah speaking at open science days in Prague and Brno, Martin presenting at the 2020 vision event in Oxford, and Joy’s involvement in running a UNESCO event on open science for doctoral schools. You can read about some of the discussions in Sarah’s blog post. Information on future events is available on the FOSTER website, or follow @fosterscience and #fosteropenscience for more info.

RDMF13
The 13th Research Data Management Forum event was held in London on 29 April. A sell-out audience heard speakers from the UK Data Service, Arkivum, Figshare, and the Universities of Edinburgh, Loughborough and Manchester. The presenters’ slides are now available on the event webpage and you can check out tweets from the event by searching for the hashtag #rdmf13. Blog posts from the three breakout groups will be published shortly.

Where are they now?
The latest instalment comes from Research Support Manager, Sarah Taylor, at Oxford Brookes University. Sarah's blog describes developments since our Institutional Engagement during 2011 and 2012, including the introduction of a Research Data Management Policy in 2013, their data archiving agreement with Arkivum and the challenges brought about by the restructuring of the Directorate of Learning Resources during 2014.

UK Research Data Discovery Service update
Last month Jisc and the DCC held a workshop on the second phase of the UK Research Data Discovery Service in London which reported findings from phase one and outlined plans for the next round of work. The breakout sessions provided an opportunity for structured discussion in groups to identify and discuss potential use cases that will help to shape the work. To find out more check out Laura’s blog post and follow #jiscRDDS on Twitter.

DMPonline update
Interest in DMPonline is steadily increasing across Europe - a Dutch funder is testing the tool to roll it out for their users and we’ve also received enquiries about running Norwegian and Danish versions. New admin users are being added every week at UK and international universities so they can add their own templates and guidance. We've also started work on the OpenAIRE and EUDAT projects, both of which include training and support around data management planning. The next release of DMPonline is due to launch imminently, incorporating a comment feature, new deployment guidance and internationalisation support. For more details check out our roadmap.

Upcoming UK institution surveys
This month the DCC joins the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Jisc in surveying UK institutions. While the EPSRC survey aims to monitor compliance with its data policy expectations within the institutions it funds and targets Pro-Vice Chancellors, the DCC survey in mid-May will target managers responsible for RDM services in all institutions participating in REF2014. Both exercises build on similar coordinated surveys by EPSRC & DCC in 2014. Jisc are also launching a survey aiming to identify the range of platforms in use for six categories of research support activity. The surveys are an opportunity to confidentially share information on progress in service development and expectations of support - see our blog post for further details.

Jisc is also carrying out a consultation to assess demand for a UK ORCID consortium membership agreement. Those targeted have until the 12th of May to respond.

DataCite news
Alex attended the DataCite Strategy Meeting and General Assembly on 24 April where the major outcome was that re3data.org - the Registry of Research Data Repositories - will now be managed as a Working Group of DataCite. It was also confirmed that a new version of the DataCite Metadata Schema will be released later this year. The new version will make the ‘Resource Type (General)’ element mandatory, which might require users of DataCite services to update their systems. The background to this decision can be found on the DataCite Metadata forum.

Resource of the month
This month we're recommending two resources!

CILIP & InformAll publish response to the Digital Skills Committee report
Having submitted evidence to the House of Lords Digital Skills Committee on behalf of CILIP members in September 2014, the CILIP Information Literacy Group, along with InformAll, have now scrutinised the resulting report, “Make or Break: The UK’s Digital Future”, published in February this year. Finding that the report places too much emphasis on digital skills rather than the underpinning and wider ranging concepts of digital and information literacy, including digital curation, they have now published their response.

New version of the RDMRose training module
The University of Sheffield’s Information School has released a new version (3) of the RDMRose training module for information professionals - 'Continuing Professional Development'. The materials were revised between November 2014 and February 2015 for use with the consortium of North West Academic Libraries (NoWAL) and can be reused by other educators or on a self-teach basis. They comprise 4 sessions of PowerPoint presentations that include pointers to resources and readings. Like the University of Edinburgh’s slightly broader targeted MANTRA course, RDMRose originated in a Jisc funded training project from the Managing Research Data programme.

Future eventsCurating and Managing Research Data for Re-use workshop
This 5-day workshop is offered as part of the ICPSR Summer Program and is for individuals interested, or actively engaged in, the curation and management of research data for sharing and reuse.

Repository Fringe 2015
We can finally confirm that Repository Fringe will be running again in Edinburgh this year from 3 - 4 August to coincide with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In a change from the historical organising committee, Valerie McCutcheon from the University of Glasgow has agreed to lead on the programme this year, but it will continue to be hosted at the University of Edinburgh. Keep the dates free, follow @repofringe for updates or let us know if you wish to join the mailing list. Registration will open shortly.

3 - 4 August, Edinburgh

Islandora Conference
The Islandora community is coming together for their first ever full Islandora Conference to discuss where they have been and where they are going.

“This guide will help you to measure the impact of research data, whether your own or that of your department/institution. It provides an overview of the key impact measurement concepts and the services and tools available for measuring impact. After discussing some of the current issues and challenges, it provides some tips on increasing the impact of your own data. This guide should interest researchers and principal investigators working on data-led research, and librarians and administrators working with research quality assessment submissions.”

You can also comment on the pull requests and issues others have raised.

New Data Stories interview
The Data Stories blog features a new interview between Inna Kouper, co-chair of the RDA Engagement Interest Group and who has also been providing effort for the blog, and Toni Rosati, Data Curator and usability researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. They talked about the qualitative data collected when conducting usability studies of a search tool for Arctic data, and the challenges of sharing them. The interview highlights some processes that need to be undertaken when deciding which data can be shared, including considerations of privacy, requirements from boards and committees (such as ethics committees) and the context in which data is collected.

If you would like to have a conversation with us about a data issue that you have faced or resolved, get in touch and we can publish your story on the blog.